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Freeman’s, and take the heads of these dead mudged to pike high on the towers when you get there.”
    Come, Jenka commanded in the ethereal, we must go fight the real battle now.
    As Marcherion remounted Blaze, he saw that Jenka was already opening a portal. Through the growing hole that would take them to the sky above the Outlands, he could see more mudged wyrms than he had ever imagined.
     
    *
     
    Zahrellion sensed her son’s worry over Amelia but couldn’t do anything about it at the moment. She and Aikira were in a sky full of thousands of mudged, trying to sustain a protective dome over an area they had packed in with people. They’d constructed the shield with Aikira’s wizardry and Zahrellion’s powerful druidic magic, and were now taking turns allowing other citizens to enter through small, street-level gaps they would open when they could.
    Zahrellion also sensed Clover was doing what had to be done, for after all, Zah herself had some of the alien blood intermingled inside her. She’d had her skin tattooed with the stuff when she was but Amelia’s age and starting to show signs of great power. She had never known her mother or father, or their origin, save for what Linux had told her about them being Mainland settlers who died in a troll attack.
    More than anything that she understood about her daughter was that she was as powerful as her father, if not more so, and could most likely defend herself from anything with her wit alone. Milly’s natural arcane ability was so much further advanced than anything Zahrellion or Linux had ever seen, that there seemed little to worry about.
    Jericho was another story. He was still mostly a boy, but as dashing as any prince had ever been. He was extremely handy with a sword, but he didn’t have a lick of magical ability about him, nor did he seem to want to. He shared Zahrellion’s tainted blood, but he was conceived not long before Jenka was consumed by the alien, so the part of Jenka that made Milly so odd wasn’t in Jericho. He was, for all intents and purposes, just a normal teenage boy.
    She decided that wasn’t quite true. He was being trained by the best huntsmen alive, and was the crown prince of the realm. She also decided that his normality, versus Jenka’s, or Milly’s, lack of it, seemed so much more appropriate to sit a throne.
    She was using the rest of her concentration to allow a few more Outland citizens into the protective field, when Aikira sang out to her.
    They are out there now. Her voice was a melody of sung words coming from some distant part of her mind that wasn’t enraptured by the magic she was wielding. We must set this field in place and join them.

Chapter Ten
     
     
    Marcherion, Rikky, and Jenka were surrounded by hundreds of mudged wyrms. The entire sky over the Outlands was filled with them. To the people below, it must have been like a cloud, for the city was bathed in shadow, save the great circle where Aikira and Zahrellion were protecting those they could.
    Marcherion had to admit he was a little scared, but Rikky stole the thought right from his mind when he spoke to them all in the ethereal.
    At least they aren’t Sarax. Rikky laughed. Then he turned Silva sharply into a tight, upward spiraling climb. The Nightshade is mine, March.
    Not if I get it first, Marcherion replied. Then to the rest of the Dragoneers he explained, We only have to kill the riders and the Nightshade. The rest will abandon the cause once they’ve no one left to give them orders.
    This field is set, Aikira sang out, her ethereal voice sounding a little exhausted.
    I’m coming, Zahrellion said. Aikira will follow after she’s gotten her breath. Warn those still in the streets, and watch yourselves. Frozen mudged are about to be falling from the sky by the score.
    Now it’s starting to feel like home, March joked as he turned to see Jenka speed off into an emerald blur of motion.
    March let one of the mudged get close enough to nearly claw him,